Security Patching for SAP Solutions
Key Takeaways
⇨ Regularly applying SAP security patches is essential for protecting business-critical SAP applications from cyber threats.
⇨ Automating the discovery of relevant SAP security notes using tools like Maintenance Planner, System Recommendations in SAP Solution Manager, or SAP Focused Run can significantly improve patching efficiency.
⇨ Prioritizing the implementation of critical and high-priority security notes within specified timeframes helps mitigate the risk of exploitation by threat actors.
The risk of unpatched systems is continuously reported as one of the top three threats to SAP systems in every survey of SAP customers performed by SAPinsider since 2021. Keeping up with SAP patches and updates is reported as the first or second greatest security challenge confronted by customers in each year between 2021- 2023. Regularly implementing notes and patches is reported as the most significant action performed by organizations to secure their SAP solutions.
Regularly patching SAP systems is the single most important action you can take to secure business-critical SAP applications from cyber threats. Despite concerns related to zero-day vulnerabilities, every known SAP exploit has targeted existing vulnerabilities for a which a patch was readily available from SAP. There is no evidence of the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities for SAP applications. However, there is a wealth of evidence for the exploitation of known vulnerabilities that have been fully patched by SAP.
Based on the findings of the surveys since 2021, it is clear that security patching is regarded by SAP customers as the most important action they undertake to protect their SAP systems from cyber threats and also the area they experience the greatest challenge. According to customers, the challenge is due to several factors. This includes the overwhelming volume of notes, the effort related to validating the relevancy of notes identified by SAP solutions, difficulties related to prioritizing notes, a reluctance to apply patches that could impact system availability, issues related to scheduling downtime for maintenance often due to competing business priorities, insufficient resources to apply notes, and the challenge of validating whether patches are correctly applied.
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